Organ-on-Chip Centre Twente Symposium Theme: Brain-on-Chip

Susanna Narkilahti, head of the NeuroGroup at Tampere University in Finland, began her career studying epilepsy and epileptogenesis in rodent models, before switching her focus to human in vitro systems in 2005. The advent of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in 2007 proved a turning point for her research, allowing the production of both healthy brain and novel disease models from patient cells.

“Using 3D culture technologies to develop ‘organ-on-a-chip’ systems is an exciting area of research across a number of human biology disciplines at present and, here at Tampere, we are involved with a large Academy of Finland-funded project called the Centre of Excellence for Body-on-a-Chip (CoEBoC). This project aims to connect multiple chip-based organ models together into a functional system", Susanna explains. "A current focus of our research is to develop technologies to allow us to guide and control axonal growth – instead of networks forming randomly. There are several approaches we could take to achieve this, and we are currently exploring which option will give us the best control of the development of axonal tracts."

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Joost Le Feber, assistant professor in the S&T group Clinical Neurophysiology at Univerity of Twente, received his MSc in electrical engineering at Delft University and a PhD from the Medical Faculty at Erasmus University Rotterdam. His current research focuses on connectivity, plasticity, and excitability in (cultured) neuronal networks, aiming to bridge the gap between cellular neurophysiology and cognitive processes.

Cultured neuronal networks can be grown over a multi electrode array to observe activity in a number of neurons. Developing networks show spontaneous activity in certain patterns. They also react to electrical stimulation, which enables some kind of learning. The underlying mechanisms are investigated by developing models, such as Brain-on-Chip, to describe the networks.